Nvidia Corp, the dominant player in chips for artificial intelligence (AI) models, plans to produce as much as US$500 billion of AI infrastructure in the US over the next four years through manufacturing partnerships.
Production of Nvidia’s latest-generation AI chip, known as Blackwell, has begun at the new Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) plant in Phoenix, Arizona, the company said in a statement on Monday.
Nvidia is also building supercomputer manufacturing plants in Texas with Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) in Taiwan, and Wistron Corp (緯創).
Photo: Reuters
It is also partnering with Amkor Technology Inc and Siliconware Precision Industries Co (矽品精密) for packaging and testing operations in Arizona.
“Adding American manufacturing helps us better meet the incredible and growing demand for AI chips and supercomputers, strengthens our supply chain and boosts our resiliency,” Nvidia chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said in a statement.
The US$500 billion figure refers to the combined value of all the goods Nvidia anticipates selling in to the supply chain for AI. In large part, the number reflects a commitment from the biggest cloud computing companies to build out and upgrade data centers with the latest equipment.
That group, which includes Microsoft Corp, Amazon.com Inc and Meta Platforms Inc, is expected to spend US$371 billion this year on AI facilities and computing resources, a jump of 44 percent from last year, according to a report published last month by Bloomberg Intelligence.
Nvidia also said the effort would mark the first time that AI supercomputers are produced in the US, a development that US President Donald Trump touted on Monday.
During an appearance at the White House, Trump said that Nvidia made the decision because of tariffs.
“It’s one of the biggest announcements you’ll ever hear — because Nvidia, as you know, controls that almost the entire sector,” he said.
Like other US investment pledges by large US technology companies, Nvidia’s outlay includes plans that were already underway. Still, it represents a win for the president’s agenda, City Index analyst Fiona Cincotta said.
“This is what Trump is aiming for,” Cincotta said on Bloomberg Television. “It is moving that manufacturing back to the US, which is what Trump has pledged.”
Nvidia shares were initially up in the wake of the announcement, before paring the gains. The stock is down 17 percent this year, part of a market rout that has hit technology shares especially hard.
Each Nvidia Blackwell chip costs tens of thousands of US dollars, with servers containing the semiconductors going for millions. Even at those steep prices, US$500 billion of AI hardware would represent a massive quantity of goods — potentially hundreds of thousands of AI-oriented servers.
“Mass production” at the Foxconn and Wistron plants is expected to ramp up in the next 12 to 15 months, Nvidia said in the statement.
Electronics players around the world, including chipmakers, are reeling from shifting new tariff policies from the Trump administration. Over the weekend, Trump pledged he would still apply tariffs to smartphones, computers and popular consumer electronics, downplaying an exemption issued on Friday last week as just a procedural step in his overall push to remake US trade.
A signaling system malfunction disrupted high-speed rail (HSR) services beginning at 8am today, with trains temporarily reduced to three northbound and three southbound trains per hour as authorities conduct inspections. The malfunction occurred on a section of track in Miaoli County during pre-operation checks early this morning, forcing northbound and southbound trains to use a single track, the HSR operator said. The regular schedule has been replaced with three hourly trains offering only nonreserved seating in each direction, stopping at every station, it said, adding that business class cars would still have reserved seating. Departures from terminal stations are scheduled at the top
Taiwan is still in the process of assessing the possibility of recruiting workers from Eswatini, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday, adding that its goal is to help Eswatini upgrade its vocational training centers. If there are plans to recruit workers from Eswatini, safeguarding national security, protecting public health and ensuring the employment rights of Taiwanese would be prerequisites, Department of West Asian and African Affairs Director-General Yen Chia-liang (顏嘉良) told a news conference. Key considerations would also include filling labor shortages in specific industries, and fostering bilateral professional and technical exchanges, he said. Yen was asked about the progress of labor
VERBOSE VESSELS: A CGA cutter and a China Coast Guard exchanged verbal barbs for more than a day in Taiwanese-controlled waters before the Chinese vessel left The Taiwanese and Chinese coast guards had a standoff near the strategically located Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the north of the South China Sea, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said yesterday. The two sides engaged in intense radio exchanges over sovereignty claims during the 33-hour standoff. China Coast Guard vessel 3501 eventually left the restricted waters, 26.6 nautical miles (49.2km) west of the Pratas Islands, at 5pm yesterday, the CGA said. Lying approximately between southern Taiwan and Hong Kong, the Taiwan-controlled Pratas are seen by some security experts as vulnerable to Chinese attack due to their distance — more than
A US uncrewed surface vessel (USV) encountered multiple Chinese warships during an autonomous transit of the Taiwan Strait, US defense company Seasats said in a statement on Wednesday. Seasats announced that a Lightfish USV had completed the first autonomous transit of the Taiwan Strait. Over five days, the USV traversed the entire length of the Strait while constantly monitoring surface vessel traffic, the company said. The Lightfish encountered multiple Chinese warships, one of which was a Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) Type 056 corvette, it said. The Chinese vessels were operating “well within Taiwan’s exclusive economic zone without transmitting their identity via the
RSS